Examples
Examples of this include Henry Clay's American System, French Dirigisme, Japan's use of MITI to "pick winners and losers", Malaysia's imposition of currency controls in the wake of the 1997 currency crisis, China's controlled exchange of the yuan, Argentina's economic policy of tariffs and devaluation in the wake of the 2001 financial crisis and the United States' use of tariffs to protect domestic steel production.
Instances became more visible from 2005 after several governments intervened to prevent takeovers of domestic firms by foreign companies. Some cases include:
- Proposed takeover of Arcelor (France and Luxembourg) by Mittal (India).
- French governmental listing of Danone (France) as a 'strategic industry' to pre-empt a potential takeover bid by PepsiCo (USA).
- Blocked takeover of Autostrade, an Italian toll-road operator by the Spanish company Abertis.
- Proposed takeover of Endesa (Spain) by E.ON (Germany), and the counter-bid by Gas Natural (Spain).
- Proposed takeover of Suez (France) by Enel (Italy), and the counter-bid by Gaz de France (France).
- United States Congressional opposition to the takeover bid for Unocal (USA) by CNOOC (PR China), and the subsequent takeover by Chevron (USA).
- Political opposition in 2006 to sell port management businesses in six major U.S. seaports to a company DP World based in the United Arab Emirates
- Case of new draft legislation at the beginning of 2007 restricting foreign companies' access to Russia's natural-resource wealth and selected Russian industries
- The New Zealand Government veto of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board's bid for a majority stake in Auckland Airport in 2008.
The reason for a policy of economic protectionism in the cases above varied from bid to bid, In the case of Mittal's bid for Arcelor, the primary concerns involved job security for the Arcelor employees based in France and Luxembourg. The cases of French Suez and Spanish Endesa involved the desire for respective European governments to create a 'national champion' capable of competing at both a European and global level. Both the French and US government used national security as the reason for opposing takeovers of Danone, Unocal and the bid by DP World for 6 US ports. In none of the examples given above was the original bid deemed to be against the interests of competition. In many cases the shareholders supported the foreign bid. For instance in France after the bid for Suez by Enel was counteracted by the French public energy and gas company Gaz De France the shareholders of Suez complained and the unions of Gaz De France were in an uproar because of the privatization of their jobs.
Read more about this topic: Economic Nationalism
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